I have not written for three days. I was not well. I have been reading the Gospels but could not arouse in myself that understanding of them, that communion with God, which I experienced before. I used often to think that man cannot help having desires. I always had and still have desires. First I wished to conquer Napoleon, I wished to give peace to Europe, I wished to be released from my crown: and all my wishes were either fulfilled and as soon as that happened ceased to attract me, or became impossible of fulfilment and I ceased to wish for them. But while my wishes were being fulfilled or becoming impossible, new wishes arose, and so it went on and goes on to the end. I wished for the winter – it has come; I wished for solitude – and have almost attained it; now I wish to describe my life, and to do it in the best way possible, that it may be of use to others. And whether this wish is fulfilled or not, new wishes will awaken. Life consists in that. And it occurs to me that if the whole of life consists in the birth of wishes and the joy of life lies in their fulfilment, is there no wish which would be natural to man, to every human being, always, and would always be fulfilled or rather would be approaching fulfilment? And it has become clear to me that this would be so for a man who desired death. His whole life would be an approach to the fulfilment of that wish and the wish would certainly be fulfilled.
At first this seemed strange to me. But having considered it I suddenly saw that it really is so; that this alone, this approach to death, is the only reasonable wish a man can have. A wish not for death itself, but for the movement of life which leads to death. That movement consists in a release from passions and temptations of that spiritual element which dwells in every man. I feel this now, having freed myself from most of the things that used to hide from me what is essential in my soul – its oneness with God: used to hide God. I arrived at it unconsciously. But if I placed my welfare first (and this is not only possible, but is what ought to be) and considered my highest welfare to lie in liberation from passions and an approach towards God, then everything that brought me nearer to death – old age, and illness – would be a fulfilment of my one great desire. That is so, and I feel it when I am well. But when I have indigestion, as was the case yesterday and the day before, I cannot awaken that feeling, and though I do not resist death I am unable to wish to draw nearer to it.
Well, such a condition is one of spiritual sleep. One has to wait quietly. I will now go on from where I left off. What I write about my childhood I recount mainly from hearsay, and often what was told me about myself gets mixed up with what I experienced; so that I sometimes do not know what I myself experienced and what I heard from others.
My whole life from my birth to my present old age makes me think of a place enveloped in a thick mist, or even of the battlefield at Dresden: everything is hidden, nothing visible, and suddenly here and there little islands open out,
I have spoken of the clearings that belong to my early life: Sophia Bénkendorf’s death, the good-bye to my parents, and Constantine’s mimicking, but several other memories of that period open out now as I think of the past. For instance, I don’t at all remember when Kóstya24 appeared and we began to live together; but I well remember how once when I was seven and he five we went to bed after service on Christmas eve and taking advantage of the fact that everybody had left our room, we got into one bed together. Kóstya in his little shirt climbed over to me and we began playing a merry game which consisted in slapping one another on our bare bodies; and we laughed till our stomachs ached and were very happy, when suddenly Nicholas Ivánovich, with his huge powdered head, entered wearing his embroidered coat and his orders, and rushed towards us with staring eyes, in horror which I could not at all explain to myself, and separated us and angrily promised to punish us and to tell our grandmother.
